It was early in my career, maybe 8 years in, and I was director of product marketing at a startup. One day, my peer, the director of marketing programs hit me with this in an ops review meeting:

You want to be judged on intentions, not results.

I recall being dumbfounded at the time. Holy cow, I thought. Is he right? Am I standing up arguing about mitigating factors and how things might have been when all the other people in the room were thinking only about black-and-white results?

It was one of those rare phrases that really stuck with me because, among other reasons, he was so right. I wasn’t debating whether things happened or not. I wasn’t making excuses or being defensive. But I was very much judging our performance in the theoretical, hermetically sealed context of what might have been.

Kind of like sales saying a deal slipped instead of did not close. Or marketing saying we got all the MQLs but didn’t get the requisite pipeline. Or alliances saying that we signed up the 4 new partners, but didn’t get the new opportunities that were supposed to come with them.

Which phrase of the following sentence matters more — the first part or the second?

We did what we were supposed to, but it didn’t have the desired effect.

We would have gotten the 30 MQLS from the event if it hadn’t snowed in Boston. But who decided to tempt fate by doing a live event in Boston in February? People who want to be judged on intentions think about the snowstorm; people who want to be judged on results, think about the MQLs.

People who want to be judged on intentions build in what they see as “reasons” (which others typically see as “excuses”) for results not being achieved.

I’m six months late hiring the PR manager, but that’s because it’s hard to find great PR people right now. (And you don’t want me to hire a bad one, do you?)

No, I don’t want you to hire a bad one. I want you to hire a great one and I wanted you to hire them 6 months ago. Do you think every other PR manager search in the valley took 6 months more than plan? I don’t.

Fine lines exist here, no doubt. Sometimes reasons are reasons and sometimes they are actually excuses. The question isn’t about any one case. It’s about, deep down, are you judging yourself by intentions or results?

You’d be surprised how many otherwise very solid people get this one thing wrong — and end up career-limited as a result.